Sunsets and Aurora (part 3 of 4)
Sunday August 13th 2000

Out of habit I always carry my camera, tripod and spare film on every trip off base. This is because there is almost always an opportunity to capture the scenery, colours, ice or even the moon in a different perspective. This is especially so when the wind has died down. At Mawson the wind is an ever present obstacle against photography. Combined with the wind is the cloud, the cold, the low light of winter and the logistical problems of going off station. The wind at Mawson regularly blows at around 50km/hr for days on end, and in this cold wind it is very difficult to take photographs due to the vibration it causes. The low light levels require the use of a tripod and slow shutter speeds.

The celestial guardian watches over highly crevassed ice at the end of Kista Straight - June 2000

The cold adds to the problems because at -20°C batteries loose their power so I only have a few minutes to setup and take a shot before I have to take the batteries out and warm them up. Hands also get cold quickly as you have to take your thick gloves off to operate the controls of the camera. A further complication is that film can get brittle and snap, not to mention when I look through the view finder the skin on my nose often quickly freezes to the back of the camera as if I had superglue on my nose!

As you may have guessed from these pictures, I like to capture celestial bodies such as the stars or the moon to complement the surrounding landscape. In between the evening sunset and morning rises is nature's night show - the Aurora Australis. Living in Australia I had never had the opportunity to see an Aurora. I had only ever seen it in still pictures and on television. I had always wondered if the shimmering of the lights was in real time, or was it time-lapsed? This question was answered the first time I saw an Aurora on the way to Mawson in mid October 1999. As I stood out on the top of the ship watching the green shimmering curtain in the sky I realised that all the moving pictures I had seen could not possibly do justice to the awesome sight of an Aurora. With the ripples and patterns sometimes moving across the sky at phenomenal speeds, watching an Aurora is definitely a moving experience.

The Constellation of Orion over Mawson at 10am on a July morning

From then on I have never ceased to be moved into grabbing my camera, putting on my freezer suit, going outside at all sorts of hours and staring skyward with my eyes and camera wide open.

As part of my job I operate and maintain equipment used to record the nightly Auroral activity, as well as the effects of changes in space weather which cause the Aurora. Put simply, the Aurora is air glow caused by the particles in the sun's solar wind colliding with and exciting the gases in the earths atmosphere. The green and red light comes from the Oxygen gas. The shimmering curtains and swirling patterns are due to the variations in the earths magnetic field as it is buffeted by the solar wind. For more information and some plots of the Aurora from space, visit http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/index.html.

Green is the dominant colour of the Aurora. The red occurs less often and is less intense. Red is also hard to pick with your eye so you have to look carefully to see where to point the camera. My favourite style of picture is a combination of green and red with stars as points and mountains in the distance.

Taking pictures of Aurora requires a fairly high pain and frustration tolerance threshold with a lot of luck. You have to use a camera with a bulb setting, on a tripod and with fast film. A lens with a wide aperture also helps. Exposures can go from as short as 10 seconds to hours depending on how bright the Aurora is and how fast it is moving. Most of the auroral activity occurs at Mawson after midnight, and often the only burst of activity for the night will occur for only 15 to 30 minutes. It is also hard to anticipate when the Aurora will occur so late nights are common for Auroral photography. The last main requirement is for low winds below 10 knots (18kph). These conditions do not occur very often and when they do I always try to take advantage of them. Along with the wind is the cold, and the difficulty of dressing up in warm clothing and walking around in the dark with all your camera equipment trying to find the best location. Even then, you have to make sure the camera settings are correct, the film is winding on correctly, the Aurora is in the field of view and the exposure time is long enough.

Red Aurora near Rumdoodle -April 2000

Email continues in part 4